Meadow Management Workshop

Joe Boyle from our Giving Nature a Home team tells us what happens at a Meadow Management Workshop, and why urban meadows are so important for wildlife.

Recently, we met with a group of volunteers to maintain our meadow behind the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. We ran the session as a workshop for volunteers and community groups on how and why to maintain urban meadows for biodiversity.

RSPB Scotland’s Giving Nature a Home Project have had a long-standing partnership with Kelvingrove museums since 2007. As part of this partnership, we engage people with the natural history collection through events, work with schools, and run workshops to teach people about nature. This was our first practical workshop of the year and combined training with maintenance of a wildflower meadow we created last year outside the museum, as well as an existing meadow near the car park. These areas were created after consultation with the museum about how they can improve the museum grounds to reduce impact on the climate and support biodiversity.

The team hard at work in the meadow- a patch of grass alongside a path. They are holding tools.

One of the keys to maintaining a species-rich wildflower meadow is ensuring that grasses and other nutrient-hungry plants, such as stinging nettles, docks and thistles don’t outcompete smaller, more delicate wildflowers. When nutrients are high, fast-growing grasses can quickly dominate the limited space, light, and water available. To keep flower diversity high we have to cut the meadow, and rake-up and remove the cut material (‘arisings’). This helps expose bare patches of soil for new wildflower seedlings to germinate and mimics the action of large grazing animals, who perform a similar role in grassland ecosystems. In cutting back the vegetation and removing the arisings, we are also preventing the nutrients stored in the plants from the returning to the soil. A lot of wildflowers are hardy and adapted to marginal, poor conditions, so they can cope better with less fertile soil than the grasses. The struggling grasses leave more space for the other species to survive, keeping the meadow rich and diverse.

During the workshop we cut the vegetation back using an electric strimmer and loppers for woodier stems, then cleared the site with grass rakes. Using lightweight handtools and battery tools means we can access sites where heavier, equipment would struggle, and makes for easier transport and lower setup costs for groups. Before starting, we checked the site over for litter, glass, rocks, sticks, dog mess, and anything else you wouldn’t want to hit with the strimmer (including two field voles, which we carefully moved to safety). This also gave us a chance to get a closer look at some of the meadow species and get a sense of where grasses dominated and the areas where species diversity was better. The cut vegetation was collected for disposal off-site.

A field vole being held in a gloved hand.

Meadows can provide great habitat for small mammals such a field voles.

While there are still areas dominated by grasses, we also found evidence of many of the species we planted there last year, so we know they can hold on in that site if we keep maintaining it right. Our cut was very late in the season due to staffing pressures and the museum being closed for COP26. It would ideally be done in late summer or early autumn. The timing of the cut influences which species have time to flower and set seed.  

Cutting different patches at different times throughout the summer and autumn can help create a mosaic of habitat niches, but is quite labour intensive. Leaving areas of the meadow uncut can benefit wildlife by providing grassy tussocks and shelter for hibernating invertebrates, small mammals, and amphibians. Uncut areas should be rotated each year to prevent nutrients building up. There are lots of great resources online on how to establish and maintain meadows out there, so if you’d like to work on your own then you can find specific information for your area. By being outside such a prominent Glasgow landmark we hope that this meadow will encourage others to create and maintain wildflower meadows as a habitat for wildlife.

The wildflower meadow in full bloom, with Kelvingrove Museum in the background.

This workshop was part of the Green Urban Connectors project explained in our last blog post. If you’d like to be involved with our work in Glasgow, please email joe.boyle@rspb.org.uk